An online analysis into relevant case study

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First of all, the area that I am interested in is Beauty and Fashion. Plastic Surgery is a very common phenomenon and social issue in recent years. In this Society, everyone values appearance. There are people who are being discriminated because of their perceived ugly appearance. Beauty or Beast? will be an online interactive documentary that allows users to learn about Plastic Surgery and the positive and negative aspects of it. It will also become a neutral forum to fresh viewer’s ideas and to start a broad discussion to why such social issue exist.

The reason of named the title as Beauty or Beast? is that I am aiming to warn people about Plastic Surgery could be a wrong thing to do, and aiming to highlight that meanwhile you are expecting the good looking outcome after the surgery, there is a very high risk of surgery failure which will cause regrets and serious consequences for the whole life.

The main idea surrounding this project will be regarding the concept of beauty and the extreme pursuit of beauty might bring negative effects. It will not only provide all the facts of plastic surgery to audience, but it will also provide a section which inform audience the other ways of becoming a beauty, such as effective exercise and how to adjust your psychological status. Essentially, this will be exploring how the concept affects self-identity and people pursuit beauty through plastic surgery. These will be compiled together and showcase an interactive project.

Research into Similar Projects

I have been searched for similar projects online. There are quite a few projects that are similar to my project ideas. One of them is ‘Doll Face: A Plastic Surgery Documentary’. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbBem8H6HS4 Although its said as an online documentary, but in my opinion, it is not totally an online documentary, its only available on Youtube and there is no other relevant information about the video and there is not a website for it. But the content in the video is quite similar to my structured content in the video.

Another similar project that I found online is a website called ‘Surgery Shock—Plastic Surgery truths, rumors and realities’

I viewed it as an online documentary, because it’s a whole project which contains website interface design, social media platform, videos and articles. The whole website project is focus on Plastic Surgery. I like its interface design as its straightforward and simple.

The documentary will contain blog and articles on Plastic Surgery. Blogs of Plastic Surgery doctors, patients and news could be used. There will be a Q & A section on expert talk and advice on Plastic Surgery, such as invites one of the famous plastic surgery doctor in Sydney. For the video section, I propose to do an interview with plastic surgery doctor, interview with people who have done plastic surgery and people who have encountered with surgery failure. It will also take shots on the street and trying to interview the pedestrian about their attitudes about it. Important Facts will be read out in the video. In addition, there will be a particular section invites audience to share their stories. This documentary will also be available on audio, for the audio section, it will be similar to the video section. The images will largely source from the Plastic Surgery websites and patient blogs.

Target Audience

This documentary largely targets people of all ages, shapes and sizes. It may greatly and especially appeal to women who perceived themselves as ugly and need help as well as women who are seeking perfection to reach her beauty standard and tech savvy and seek advices online. The audience will be offered interactive content through sharing stories and discussion in online forum. This is aiming to provide a personal experience to audience.

Features

 Video and Image Gallery

 Audio Files

 Online discussion forum

 Expert Q&A

 Articles on different kinds of Plastic Surgery and care instructions

 Polls

 Case study

 Blogs from doctors, patients and others

 Featured Beauty Care advices and exercise

 Featured recipes

Social Media & Community Engagement

Social media platforms will be integrated into the project and the icons for links will be put on the home page. The main social media platforms will be used including Facebook, twitter and tumblr. Audience can share this documentary on to their social media platforms thus it can publicize the website as well as connecting with other communities. Video and audio share links will also be provided for audience to share to other forum. Additionally, a page for this documentary will be specially created on these social media platform; it is also another way to allow users to share their ideas after watching the video. In order to increase user participation and gain publicity, these pages will be continuously updated with upcoming videos, images and articles.

Platform

This documentary is a multiplatform documentary as it will not only be available online. The web documentary will be delivered in a digital format and accessible by all web users on HTML5 which based on web 2.0. HTML5 is the most popular multimedia interface. In order to increase user participation, the documentary will also be delivered on broadcast radio. The documentary will also be available on smartphones and tablets which can provide users with mobility and convenience.

Interface Design & User Experience

– LAYOUT

From the above diagram, it can be seen that there are six sub-pages under the home page. This is a draft diagram of the website page and there are no words, files and videos in it. Firstly I have used a big section to highlight Plastic Surgery and there will be a picture for the blank beside the words. This can highlight the main theme and topic of the documentary. In my opinion, the whole layout of homepage is quite straightforward. Under the first big section, there are a widget box including the latest two videos which will also be updated in the future, and other sections. So audience can easily access and browse what information it contains. Under the title, there is a navigation bar, which directs audiences to different pages. Social media platform is designed to locate on the left top under the navigation bar to remind audience that they can share the website. The main sections are concentrated on the home page. The discussion forum also shown on the left, it delivers interactive elements of the site to audiences and invites their participation. Only two videos will be put in the section because there are more videos in the videos page and these are just giving audiences a reminder that they can watch videos. Overall, the whole design for the home page is basing on the concept simple. The information is straightforward for audiences to see.

For the fonts that will be used in website, the words will be used in bold, italic and in different colour sizes to distinguish the primary important message, the secondary important message and to highlight other relevant information.

Therefore, when users click into the page, they will feel the website is rich of information and not boring. More pictures will be added into the page when it’s implementing.

– Here’s the wireframe for the whole pages of project structures:

Technical Feasibility

This web documentary is a technically feasible project. Video and audio accessibility is very important; if the format is not strictly right some users might not able to see the video on their computers. Thus the documentary will be designed to use Adobe Flash, which is a common and basic digital player application. Other technical issues include the editing for the pages, the display of pictures and forums. Discussion Forum section will be built in and pictures will be displayed by Flash in GIF and JPG formats. Since it’s a web documentary, it can be accessed through Google Chrome, Safari or Firefox web browser, smartphones browsers and application, ipad.

Moral/Ethical Considerations

Since whole project is about beauty and plastic surgery, there is risk of being misunderstood and wrongly interpreted by audience, such as the documentary is judging people’s appearance and beauty standard. Everyone naturally has their own beauty standard and this is a very subjective issue. Thus in order to avoid any possible connection with the above risk and any appearance assault issue, the language of this documentary will be neutral and be delivered in an objective tone. All the facts mentioned in the documentary will be supported by and sourced from academics and experts.

Conclusion

Overall, this documentary targets everyone and aims to raise the awareness of Plastic Surgery. Plastic Surgery is a common social phenomenon nowadays, because of the extreme pursuit of beauty perfection there are women have been addicted to it. However, Plastic Surgery could also ruin your life if the surgery is not successful, it will cause worse effects to your life. This documentary is aimed to remind people that plastic surgery is not the only way of the pursuit of beauty. This documentary is designed to be delivered through website, smartphones application and broadcast radio, as to increase its accessibility to audience. If this documentary is chosen to be implemented, more details and information would need to be added in.

Originally, my ideas for the documentary proposal are organized based on my personal interests, which are centred on the fashion and beauty-related industry and issues. Being as a woman, it’s natural that women love to read things related to beauty and fashion. At first I decided to look into the fashion theme, investigating the fashion attitudes of the residents in Sydney to see how they defined ‘Fashion’ and also intended to give people instructions on what to wear and not wear. After I started to do some research and draft a simple plan for the chosen topic, I found there were too many limitations on implementing the proposal, thus I decided to change to another topic, which also is one of the current societal issues, that is Plastic Surgery. If I continue to do the fashion topic, it would be very hard to express the exact angle that I want to deliver and concepts of the documentary.

Further Thoughts & Ideas

Society has always valued beauty. In recent years, there has been increasing number of woman who takes plastic surgery. Even I have friends around me have done plastic surgery, such as double-fold eyelids, nose surgery and face lift. It’s everybody’s right to pursuit beauty. Therefore, as today Plastic Surgery has become a common phenomenon among society, I am intending to target Plastic Surgery as my central theme and target ‘beauty’ as the main concept for the documentary. This documentary is intend to deliver the advantages, disadvantages, instructions of plastic surgery as well as combined with education towards the attitude of facial aesthetics.

Concept Development

In recent two years, one of the most popular discussion topics appeared in social media platforms in China is Plastic Surgery. People have been discussing about which celebrity has done plastic surgery and they did. Just about two weeks ago, one day I found a Korean public reality television show online which called ‘LET beauty’, it is a show centred on plastic surgery. This reality television show invites people in Korea to the show to help them reshape themselves, those people who are perceived to be extremely ugly and living psychologically painful because of their perceived ugly appearance. The show shocked me because there are really people who are very ugly have been reshaped into a perceived very beautiful/handsome person again.

Moreover, recently with the all the models and celebrities pitched in the new media and traditional Medias, such as magazines, and all the beauty-related discussions, I concluded that in nowadays the opinion of beauty can be summarised into the following characteristics: tall and straight nose shape, small face shape, big eyes. As I am using Weibo, which is the biggest social media platform in China, there are many photos of women on Weibo and these photos gave me an impression that it seems that women are looks very alike to each other because they share many common facial characteristics and even dressing and make-up style. This social trend of ‘beauty’ really makes me feeling confusing, what is the exact standard of ‘beauty’? What is the exact standard of ‘pretty’? Therefore, I am thinking to develop an online interactive documentary about Plastic Surgery and beauty.

Once upon a time in Cabramatta, directed by Sue Clothier and Craig Graham, is an Australian documentary film that tells the untold story of how the Vietnamese community overcame the odds and found their place in multicultural Australia. It’s a three-part Australian documentary TV series and shown by SBS ONE on January 2012

After the Vietnam War ends, Australia Prime Minister Fraser decided to open the doors for refugees. Cabramatta is a south western suburb of Sydney about thirty kilometres from the city centre and its part of the local government area of the City of Fairfield. This town has been known for ‘Vietnamese Town’ is because most arrivals were initially housed in hostels in the area, which is called Migrant Hostel and Cabramatta has a history as migrant ‘transition zone’ which has been hosted a succession of post-world War Two arrivals. Vietnamese people also settling in surrounding suburbs including Ganley Vale, Bankstown and Fairfield. Vietnamese is just like the other migrants who come from different countries, the 80s and the 90s of them were struggling to find their place in a foreign land in this one of the tiny Sydney suburbs. This documentary outlined a history of the community life in Cabramatta.

The purpose of setting this site for this documentary is to promote the past untold stories to people and letting audience know why this tiny suburb Cabramatta has become the town where Vietnamese live. It can be said it’s a quite interactive documentary that allows audiences to feel the culture and the way of living of Vietnamese as well as the stories of this tiny suburb. After watching the video, audiences can also share their ideas and comments on the home page.

Once upon a time in Cabramatta is a broadcast documentary TV series as well as available online, it a web-based project as well. It is available on media outlets such as computers, smart phone (iphone) and ipad and it also has been delivered in a book format. The content is all the same. Therefore audience can access the film more easily, however I am recommend to view in the web as in my opinion the accessibility of mobile application is not high. The download of ipad and iphone edition and this notice of download is appeared on the home page website, and that means if users who didn’t know and see this documentary film website, they don’t know the film and also don’t know it can be downloaded. Adding that viewing in smart phone the play quality may not be high and clear enough.

Target Audience and User experience

The purpose of this project and website aims to reach out to mass audience. Thus the target audience of the documentary is mass audience. The aim is to let people who no matter are living in Cabramatta, close-by or in other cities in Australia, even people who do not living in Australia to know this place and on the other hand it also promotes the multiculturalism of Australia.

In my opinion, the documentary is easy for audience to navigate, the headings and subheadings are very clear shown. The navigation bar clearly directs you to the page you want. The accessibility of the whole website is high. As this is on a SBS website, people will be more likely to find this documentary. SBS website is a very famous news website with vast quantities of news readers. With numerous browsers per day, this documentary is not hard to be exposed to them. As users found this website, they can clearly see the headings and get to know that the first page is the background text and they can go to the desired page following the guiding headings. There are several documentary videos on the website and can be displayed largely on the screen. The website also invites people to share their comments and ideas after watching the documentary.

Additionally, there are multimedia platforms in this website and search engines for users that allow them to search whatever they desired.

But there are also some disadvantages; for example, the section ‘Cabramatta Community Initiative’ Section which located on the right and its very eye-attracting, this widget seems has broken down as there is a line saying it’s no longer running. I think this is meaningless, if a widget has broken down it should be removed from the website instead of just leaving it there, it will create a feeling of this website has been ignored for a while to the mass audiences.

Social Media Implementation and User participation

This web-documentary website is not very well engaged with Social media platforms, the only social media platform that its connected with is twitter. As it can be seen a small twitter sign appeared just on the top of the subheadings of ‘Cabramatta Community Initiative’, and it’s a sign that seems telling you if you want to tweet or share this site on twitter then click here. Besides, there are no other social media platform icons on the page, such as Facebook. And I have also personally searched this documentary show on Facebook however there is no a set-up page for it. But this website indeed invites audience to participate by setting up the comments zone and users can see other’s comment on the homepage straightforwardly.

Interface Design

The whole website seems has been established in a blog format, the content was centred middle and leaving the two sides blank. The title of this website has been designed as using a background picture of ‘Once upon a time in Cabramatta’ headings with a lion beside. This makes the whole website looks more professional and best representing the content of the website. The navigation bar is very clear and straightforward outlining all the relating pages and audience will be clearly directed to different pages. On the home page, a large image shows the main character of the show and gives a brief idea to audience about the main character of the show with a short brief story introduction. This part uses a big column which positioned 2/3 of the whole content box. Under the picture, it’s the comment zone and users can firstly see other people’s comment and it can arouse their interests to the film.

On the right hand side the ‘Cabramatta Community Initiative’ small section aims to show the community and used as a highlight of the main theme, however its useless as it is not functioned. I suggest this should be replaced by other meaningful widgets. A small section below this is a small widget trying to tell people what shows are going on and the small widget (small section) below these are just meaningless. In terms of colour, it has adopted black and white and it’s very simple and straightforward. This makes the whole page looks more professional and engaged. However, the whole design of the page might be quite boring as it did not highlighted any interesting areas, the website is just like other story websites looks very ordinary.

Summary

Overall this is an interesting documentary that provides more insights of the history in Cabramatta and it also has a good and simple website. But there are too many technical issues which can be improved. Such as removing the useless widgets and improving its design layouts. The design layout can be more interesting than this one as although the current design looks very simple and straightforward, being as one of the user, I can’t feel the attractiveness of the website. It also can be more engaged with social media. Additionally, it’s like been hidden on the SBS website and its hard for audiences to find it. For those people who are living in Cabramatta or people who wants to move to Cabramatta, this website is pretty informational for them.